Wi-Fu

Howdy. I am a network engineer with a wifi hobby. I mean (cue Keanu) I know Kung-fu: routing and switching, firewalls, and data centre stuff, but I know wifi is an entirely different beast, and my wireless Kung-fu (henceforth “Wi-fu”) is weak.

Wifi has a well known community on the web. In the words of Keith Parsons: “You HAVE to be on Twitter”. I’ve been a spectator in this community via Twitter for a while, and I’ve learned TONS. But I was recently fortunate to meet some people who are a big deal in wifi (including the guy who actually wrote the book that I used to pass the CWNA certification); and I was able to experience the wifi community first hand.

While it was definitely intimidating at first to be in same room as these guys (the Bruce Lee, Mr Miyagi, and Chuck Norris of wifi), the community has earned a reputation for being inclusive and these black belts were omgsupercoooool ambassadors. Whilst they somewhat mocked my great white north heritage, it was no biggie for a few of us noobs to sit at the cool kids’ table for lunch and share a few drinks after class (eh!).

Which is why Im not surprised that I’m here trying valiantly (VALIANTLY) to not type “Dear Diary…”. The wifi community is also big on contributing to said community, so I was quickly asked about my blog. Everyone in wifi has a blog, so I was a hoser because I didn’t (extrapolation mine alone and tongue in cheek :P).

So now I’m a hoser with a blog. “Net Gain” was the most clever play on wired and wireless networking I could come up with in ten minutes.